


14 seconds

by Atalante



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Rebels
Genre: ;), Chopper has made calculations, Episode Kindred, F/M, Yeah it's about that kiss but you knew that already didn't you, in hyperspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 01:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalante/pseuds/Atalante
Summary: 'Meatbags press their faces together to show affection. I calculated that the decline indicates that you want to get him off our ship.'





	14 seconds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catrinity](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Catrinity).



Space blurred into hyperspace and Hera slumped down in the pilot seat. She had sat on the edge, waiting for her 50/50 chance to live or die. The Defender’s hyperdrive was a tricky piece of tech and quickly patched to the U-wing, and she had put the ship under further stress by accelerating inside the construction sphere. Perhaps her chances had been down to 20/80 by all that maneuvering. She smiled and allowed herself to breathe and feel alive.

Alive … The kiss still tickled on her lips – the tickle returned as the stress and fear and adrenaline wore off. She smiled.

Chopper grunted in the bay below her. _Meatbags press their faces together to show affection. You used to do this more often in the past. I calculated that the decline indicates that you want to get him off our ship._

“What?” She startled and laughed. “What is that, Chop, are you analyzing our kiss frequency?”

He grumbled wordlessly.

She looked out into the whirling maelstrom of blue and white.

“I didn’t have time”, she said softly. “He came back wounded and turned away from… everyone. And we really didn’t have time for something like this.”

 _It took 14.8 seconds_ , Chopper said. _You could repeat it 1945.95 times each day without losing time you meatbags need for maintenance. Plus: you could still have the average amount of time left to fight the Imperials._

She eyed him and tried not to smile.

“I knew you’re crazy”, she said. “But I didn’t realize how crazy you are.”

It did sound easy, though, calculated by a mad rust bucket.

“It’s not that easy. It’s not that we lacked time for a kiss, there comes a load of … data with a relationship, and I didn’t have enough space in my … memory circuits for it.” That was a metaphor that Chopper would get. She always fought with his old memory circuits that fragmented and clustered and were full of useless old data.

 _So you erased something?_ , he asked. Hm, perhaps he didn’t get it after all.

“Not really”, she smiled. “I think I just realized something.”

Or perhaps he was right and she _had_ erased something. She could barely grasp it – reluctance? Restraint? Hesitation?

He stopped being nosy and just grunted something binary at the U-wing’s main computer.

She had turned away too often – to more complicated things. Being with Kanan had never been complicated, and nevertheless she had left him behind for the sake of seemingly impossible things. Like overthrowing an Empire. She had never imagined what would happen afterwards – hope was vital, but she was no fool. She didn’t want to hold on to fantasies of peace and happiness. There was no _time_ for such thoughts.

It was when he had wanted to apologize for wanting so little, something she could give so easily and freely, that she had realized that she had been a fool for keeping herself even from something so simple as imagination.

14.8 seconds, she thought. Chopper was right. She _had_ time for this. His logic was twisted, but it usually worked out.

She smiled and closed her eyes again, remembering hyperspace travels that seemed ages ago, when they were just three spectres on a Ghost ship.

Perhaps, if they just managed to hold on, to outlast, to survive… Images of a future she never thought about flickered through her mind.

I want us to live, was the most determined thing in her mind. She opened her eyes – the beacons announced Yavin 4.

I want us to live.


End file.
